Food bills

A couple days ago, Jo at Jo's Boys was lamenting about the price of food. Keeping grocery bills to a reasonable level is something that many of us are struggling with.

In my comment to Jo about it, I said that my kids are eating essentially the same amount as the adults. And then later, I got to thinking 'That can't be right. They're just kids. They can't be eating that much.....'

So I decided to check the kids' BMI's and their daily caloric requirements.

There are a bunch of these calculators around but the best ones I found are at Baylor College of Medicine. Scroll down and on the right side you'll see a section called CALCULATORS.

You can calculate your own and the children's BMI, and you can get a listing of caloric requirements. For the kids, it will even generate a Healthy Eating Plan, listing suggested number of servings of all the food groups.

I'm within the range for a healthy BMI but I'm struggling with middle-age ooze over the waistband. Given that, the kids and I are supposed to be eating the same amount each day. Roo, being almost a foot taller than I am, & not having waistband ooze, gets a 1000 calories more.

So there you have it. It's official. Kids need a lot of food. And if you want to scare yourself, you can try to imagine life in a couple years with older, even more active kids, and see the caloric #'s skyrocket.